Steve Southerland Against Shutdown Deal, Feels Heat from the Democrats
October 17, 2013
With Democrat Gwen Graham outraising him in the third quarter and currently having more cash on hand, U.S. Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Fla., is a top target for Democrats in the 2014 campaign cycle. On Wednesday night. Southerland voted against the agreement crafted in the U.S. Senate to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.
“With each passing day of this stalemate, I shared the growing anger of my people toward a broken Washington,” Southerland said. “That’s why I fought tooth and nail from day one to avert a shutdown, prevent a debt default and level the playing field between the American people’s health care and that of their government. Unfortunately, as the Senate rejected nearly every House-passed bill to fund essential services and keep the government open, it became clear to me that some in Washington were more interested in scoring political points than finding real solutions.
“I had no choice but to oppose Senator Reid’s bill because it provides short-term spending without addressing the long-term drivers of this shutdown, including an exploding national debt and glaring inequalities under the president’s health care law,” Southerland added. “I simply can’t justify to my constituents a system where corporations and labor unions deserve a one-year compliance delay and government officials get special premium subsidies while average American families receive neither. I hope both parties in Washington learned a lesson from this shutdown and we get serious about addressing these issues before again bringing the nation to the brink.”
The House majority PAC, a Democratic super-PAC, turned up the heat on Southerland who is one of their top targets for 2014.
“Steve Southerland’s government shutdown has already cost $20 billion and preventing our nation from being able to pay its bills would roil economies around the world, but Southerland chose to throw caution to the wind and put politics – not the families of North and Northwest Florida – first,” said Andy Stone, a spokesman for the House majority PAC. “Voters won’t soon forget that Steve Southerland recklessly chose to use a ‘political weapon of mass destruction’ to throw them under the bus.”